Pokémon Online is the second most popular Pokémon battle simulator (after Pokémon Showdown!) with over 900,000 battles played in December 2010 alone. It allows players to experience real time Pokémon battles against Pokémon players from all over the world. It was created using the C++ programming language and Qt development framework. It is open-source and free for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Android Phones, and Linux. The latest version is 2.5.2.

Contents

Features

Pokémon Online has a full battle engine for all generations 1-6, with all Pokémon, moves, items, and Abilities implemented. Single, Double, and Triple battle formats are supported allowing for diversity of play and giving VGC players a place to practice, along with the team preview and a selection of common clauses. The teambuilder allows competitive teams to be constructed in minutes rather than the days it would take in a real game, which means almost all competitive players use it as a testing ground. Pokémon Online also has:

A ladder system

A channel system

Private Messages

Ignore button

Animated HP bars

Battle music and Pokémon cries

Challenge Cup (with Level Balance clause)

Multiple teams able to be loaded at once

Plugins or scripts can be created to add more features to the client or server.

Scripting

Server scripts can be written in JavaScript allowing almost unlimited flexibility. The most notable scripts so far are the Mafia Script which runs mafia games in the chat, and the Tournament Script which runs tournaments of any size with minimal intervention, allowing large tournaments to be hosted constantly on the bigger servers. Documentation on scripting for PO and information on the custom functions can be found here.

Usage statistics

On July 28, 2010, the very first Pokémon Online usage statistics were released for all the tiers supported. The statistics contained the number of battles and percentage each Pokémon has been used, along with the different sets, EVs and Natures. Currently detailed usage statistics can be found here. Other servers may download the stat collection plugin and generate their own usage stats to publish, but so far none have.

Themes

The themes are stored with the client as CSS and images so can be easily edited. The client is able to switch between several themes and many alternate themes are available for download here.

Development

Pokémon Online was developed by coyotte508 as the lead programmer, Darkness as the designer and nmilkosky as the programmer. Mystra, Mephistos, KazoWAR, CoolKingler and Steve have all contributed to the code. On 28 November, 2010, Version 1.0 was released, its "out-of-beta" stage. Weby currently hosts the main server, called Pokémon Online. Like the rest of the program the server software is open and anyone is free to set up a server.